The Grinch who built a community

When I was (reluctantly) at the mall yesterday, I was reminded of the tremendous potential for brand building during the holidays.

Not shopping, not buying things.

Brand building.

By creating communities.

With all of the giving and cheer, when people are at their best and most in the mood to spread good tidings, think about the tremendous opportunity to build communities of people who are passionate about the same thing.

Apple comes closest, for all the obvious reasons. The atmosphere in their store is kind of like a big party that everyone cool and nice is invited to. All of the people in there have something in common, whether you can put your finger on it or not.

Can’t say many other stores/brands have it right. But think of the community-building opportunities, all over the mall. A massive captive audience filled with the spirit of the season and theoretically, willing to take the time to address how they feel about their most (or least) favorite brands.

Even the guy in the SUV who blew off a stop sign and gave me the finger as he raced off at 40 mph. That’s a disgruntled patron with valuable input. What if the mall planners could ask him how they could improve the parking and throughways during the holiday? And what if he had suggestions, and the planners adapted per his suggestions? Think of the good faith that would engender and the allegiance that could be created.

If only someone asked the Grinch why he hated Christmas so much. So much heartache could’ve been avoided, so much Whoville brand building and community planning could’ve been achieved.

How to create a community of spies

There are more end-of-year lists than mattress sales this time of year. Ridicule them if you will, but they’re great ways to find good reading, stupid videos, cool design…pretty much the best of anything you’d ever want to experience.

You could probably just live in a cage from January through Thanksgiving, wake up and spend a few solid days online, and find the bestest stuff of the year.

Here’s one list on design that’s mindless and fun. I especially like the Rollercoaster designed to kill you and the USB drives hidden around NYC to connect people into a little spy network, the former because it’s wickedly smart and the latter because it’s another ingenius way to build a community.

Try something new for $20

Does this sound like a good thing? I suppose it depends on if you’re in a back alley in Thailand or at Alinea. The latter could give you gastric pleasure beyond compare and the former…well…there may be pleasure involved, but also some antibiotics shortly thereafter.

When it comes to Dabble, though, it’s a great idea.

For $20 a pop, you can spend a couple of hours learning about something you’ve always wanted to learn about. Like fencing. Or beer brewing, venture capital, and tomorrow, how to plan a stress-free dinner party, just in time for the holidays.

Low commitment, high potential. An ingenius way to be part of a temporary mini-community and learn something new while you’re at it. No wonder it’s spreading.

It’s like a smaller cooler Learning Annex. And what it seems to be building, that Learning Annex is too big to drum up, is a “buy local” type of community. As someone who prefers Filter and Star Lounge over Starbucks and Caribou, I’m all for it.

Pay attention to the B-side of life

When you have to listen to an entire album, you're forced to hear songs you would otherwise never have heard. You can pay attention to certain harmonies, or notice background vocals, or the way the instruments were arranged. You might catch some weird sound effect that's mixed in.

Paying attention to input in this way is surprise-fueled potential. Inspiration. A way to get to discovery. Which of course is the way to get to fresh ideas.

When you choose what you see or hear or do, rather than letting it happen, the opportunity for surprise decreases just a little bit. Since you know what you’ll be getting, the chances of a happy accident go down.

But what about the TV remote control? Can the generation before mine say the same thing about the way I learned to channel surf, therefore bypassing what could have been unlimited unplanned viewings? Sure.

Do I think I’m any less creative or inspired because I mastered the remote? Not really.

But just remember, Playlist Generation, as your appetite for control grows greater and you pick and choose with every decision: don't forget to pay attention to the B-side of life. It's the key that opens the door to discovery.

Does choice trump Discovery?

So have you heard about the Playlist Generation?
These are the folks who only know listening to music on ipods and mp3 players.
They don’t look at 78 rpm albums as a way of listening to music. They see them as cute scratchy relics that DJ’s use at concerts or shows.
Back in the day of albums, if you wanted to buy a song, you had to buy the whole album. Warps, scratches and all. You couldn’t just buy the one song.
The Playlist Generation gets to buy (or more likely, steal) that one song they’ve got to have.
Playlists are awesome.
But like many time-shortening devices, they may hamper Discovery.
And that’s too bad. Because discovery is the fount of new ideas.
A playlist to today’s teenager is kind of like a remote control for teenagers when I was one. A way of skipping over all of the options you don’t want and choosing only the one(s) you love, be it music or tv stations.
Each preceding generation decries the lazy-fication of our youth. Not having to stand up to change the damn channel. Not having to patiently (and sometimes painfully) listen to each song on the album just to get to the one really good single.
The similarity is, in each case, discovery is affected.
Tune in tomorrow to see why.

Water in a Box

Before we continue our conversation about Discovery, an interlude about the importance of follow-through.

I’d bet lots and lots of people have thought of ways to sell water in something other than a landfill-filling plastic bottle.

So why haven’t the huge corporate monoliths brought an alternate to market? And why has a small ecologically responsible company beaten them to it?

Your guess is as good as mine, but I’d bet it has something to do with that annoying little thing called profit.

Too bad, because this is a phenomenal idea with wonderful design. And not only did they discover it, they made it happen. They brought it to life. So please find some and buy some, and be inspired by a great idea executed really well.

And PS, it’s delicious.

Discovery is the action that creates moments of newness

Discovery has been around as long as people have been around. Whatever you consider to be the beginning of human civilization—Adam and Eve, Cavemen, Led Zeppelin, fresh pasta—the great ideas of the time were sparked by a moment of discovery.

Doing the naughty when you're not supposed to is an idea; finding fruit on The Tree of Knowledge was a Discovery.

Light bulbs are an idea; the controlled movement of charged particles like protons, electrons and ions was a discovery.

Discovery is the action that creates moments of newness.

Is it any different now? Absolutely not. Ideas are democratic. Discovery is unique and is the key to getting to fresh ideas.

The more intriguing question is, does the act of discovery change over time? Will our kids and grandkids experience discovery the same way our ancestors did?

The answer is, much like most questions comparing digital natives to their forebearers, yes and no.

The difference can best be articulated by the way people listen to music now vs. the way I listened to music as a teenager.

If you’re curious to hear how, check back on Wednesday.

There’s a reason they didn’t name it the Space Shuttle “Ideation”

Let’s talk about Discovery.
Discovery is an action. That goose-bumpy spine tingly activity that sparks the creation of the germ that becomes a great idea.
People love talking about the moment they come up with a great idea. That moment of inspiration. But “come up with” and “inspiration” are passive words.
Discovery is an active word. Synapses are firing, adrenaline is flowing.
Discover Dis • cov • er(diss kuvver): be first to learn or find something. (v)
A verb.
The actual moment of “Aha!”
“Idea” is not, sayeth the dictionary, a verb. Only recently has the world begun turning it into a verb. Ideating and Ideation are sexier ways of talking about what Alex Osborn simply and clearly coined “brainstorming” back in the Mad Men days. Now it’s a way to sound smarter and charge more money to facilitate it.
I’m fine with making conjugations of “idea” into different parts of language as long as we all acknowledge that there’s no new ideas without discovery.
Lots of ideas, to be sure, and lots of creativity, but without discovery, forget about fresh thinking. Which is all well and good for people who can get by with warmed over ideas that generate mediocre excitement and flat sales.
But smart cool profitable ideas? How do you get one of those?
Look for part 2, coming early next week.